He studied only to
please her. He found that, after all, she did not care very greatly for
literature or music or pictures. Her enthusiasm for these things was the
enthusiasm of a child who is bathed in an atmosphere of appreciation and
would return it on to any object that she could find.
He discovered that she loved compliments, that she cared about dress, that
she loved to have crowds of friends about her, and that parties excited her
as though these were the first that she had ever known. But he found, too,
that in those half-hours when she was alone with him she showed her love
for him with a passion and emphasis that was almost terrifying. Sometimes
when she clung to him it was as though she was afraid that it was not going
to last. He discovered in the very beginning that below all her happy easy
life, an undercurrent of apprehension, sometimes only vaguely felt,
sometimes springing into sight like the eyes of some beast in the dark,
kept company with her.
It was always the future--a perfectly vague, indefinite future that
terrified her. Every moment of her life had been sheltered and happy and,
by reason of that very shelter, her fears had grown upon her. He remembered
one evening when they had been present at some party and she had been
radiant, beautiful, in his eyes divine. Her little body had been strung to
its utmost energy, she had whirled through the evening and at last as they
returned in the cab, she had laid her head on his shoulder and suddenly
flung her arms about him and kissed him--his eyes, his cheeks, his
mouth--again and again.
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